The LANCER incinerator project (the Los Angeles City Energy Recovery plant) was suppose to have been built in South Central Los Angeles on 41st and Alameda Streets in the mid-1980s. It had been approved by the Los Angeles City Council on June 28th 1983. Today a seven acre community garden is on that site.

The purpose of this waste-to-energy incinerator was to "burn 1,600 tons of trash daily" and about 40,000 homes in the community would receive electricity from it. As councilman Gilbert Lindsey put it, it will make the community "a garden of Eden." When residents of South Central learned that this incinerator was going to be built in their neighborhood, they decided to oppose its construction and form a coalition, the Concerned Citizens of South Central. They felt the consequences of this project would not be worth the risks.

The residents of this mainly black and hispanic community were concerned that bringing more garbage trucks into the neighborhood would increase noise, congestion, and pollution . Citizens were also concerned that the incinerator power plant would only cause more health problems like asthma, bronchitis and many other respiratory illnesses. Proponents, however, claimed there was a one-in-a-million chance that a new case of cancer might develop.

Mrs. Robin Cannon, who was a member of Concerned Citizens of South Central, said that residents were worried that not enough health studies had been done on the possible effects of the incinerator's exhaust. Most of the studies that had been done involved white males between 20 ant 30, not amongst minorities, young and old alike.

Even though $14.7 million was offered to improve the neighborhood, citizens were sceptical and claimed that all of it would go to street repairs from all the trash trucks rolling to and from the incinerator.

Since 1985, the so-called "minority group" made speeches at City Hall and in front of the press. Many of these residents had never made public speaches before. They had to study subjects like chemistry and epidemiology. But it took someone with much more authority to end it all. Four years after the controversy began, Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley finally withdrew his support from from the waste-to-energy project. The LANCER project ended in June of 1987.

Once this project was put to death, so were two others that were going to be built in other urban areas full of minorities. The government chose South Central over Encino or Pacific Palisades to build this hazardous cite because most believed that white suburbanites would never let them build a project like this in those communities.

Residents feel that South Central Los Angeles took a large step towards earning some political respect and not get stepped all over. The community held to the belief that health always comes first, no matter how good the benefits might be.

(Editor's Note) Since this article was written, the Los Angeles Unified School District has run into legal road blocks from the Concerned Citizens of South Central to delay the opening of Jefferson New Middle School, about 15 blocks south of here on East 56th Street. Concerned Citizens wants more tests done before the new $54 million middle school is opened since hexavalent chromium and tetrachloroethene (TCE) were left by a former furniture manufacturer and chromium plating plant, and were found in the soil and water beneath the school. The district's environmental impact review did not reveal the existance of these two cancer-causing substances. 16

Ten years ago Concerned Citizens blocked the construction of an incinerator in South-Central over concerns that not enough testing had been done on the possible hazards to the communty. See An Urban Toxic Waste Site for related information.

Related Web Sites
Is There Environmental Racism? Occident College: Environmental Justice News Articles

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